00:00Dear Gianfranco, dear friends, I am clearly sorry not to be able to be with you
00:04physically, I still wanted to make my contribution to a
00:08appointment that has become a fixed point of Italian politics. The
00:11Saint Vincent conference went through the first, the second
00:14republic, seen the birth and decline of parties, leaders, electoral laws,
00:19legislature. In all these years it has preserved a political culture in
00:23which the majority of Italians have recognized for a long time. I don't
00:27I come from this story, I don't pretend to tell it better than those who have
00:30lived, but the DC was for decades the governing party par excellence, the most
00:34lasting legacy of republican history and I learned that its strength came from the
00:38ability to represent a large popular bloc, a popular bloc that
00:43he wanted to be in the West, on the side of freedom, of democracy, in years
00:47where an important part of Italian politics instead looked elsewhere, towards
00:52models that promised equality and produced oppression. When the
00:57DC is over and its heirs have taken different paths, Gianfranco in his book
01:01tells the story of someone who chose the centre-right and called it with a
01:05happy formula the Italian party, a world that has changed shape but which is
01:09remained the point of reference for many popular, conservative Italians,
01:13patriotic and liberal and also thanks to them that the centre-right coalition
01:17born more than 30 years ago today it expresses the longest-lasting government in the history of the
01:21republic. And I say this because, as always, when there are problems on the horizon
01:25political elections we return to talk about the center, about spaces to occupy, about new
01:29political containers, but I believe that the center is not a place to be in
01:32halfway, it is a culture made of family, work, freedom, sense of
01:37We, the State and ourselves, have placed that culture at the centre of government action.
01:41Clearly today Italy is very different from the one it saw the first time.
01:44Saint-Messon conference, but there are profound questions that run through the
01:49generations and to which we too are called to respond. Today as yesterday,
01:53Italians ask those who represent them to defend the national interest in
01:56Europe and the world, ask to build a family-friendly, allied state
02:00of those who work and produce, uncompromising with those who do not respect the rules, attentive to
02:04more fragile, meritocratic. This is the vision that holds the
02:08center-right, it is the mandate that the Italians have entrusted to us for four years
02:11ago and which we will honor to the end. We will also do so thanks to the contribution
02:15precious for those like you who are heirs to an ancient history that still knows how to look at the
02:19future. Thank you, Gianfranco, thank you all, and have a great conference.
02:23Thank you all.
